Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #463, Umbridge’s Quibbles (OOTP 26, Seen and Unforeseen)
Show Intro
[Show music plays]
Andrew Sims: Welcome to MuggleCast, your weekly ride into the wizarding world. I’m Andrew.
[pause]
Micah Tannenbaum: I’m Micah. Sorry, I didn’t know what to do there, Andrew. Where’s Eric?
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Eric is off for his birthday.
Micah: Oh, that’s right. He threw me for a loop, though. I wasn’t expecting to go second.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Laura Tee: I’m Laura.
Andrew: And we’re joined by Pat again this week. Hi, Pat. Welcome back to the show.
Pat: Hey, everyone.
Andrew: Subbing for Eric this week. On today’s episode, we will be discussing Chapter 26 of Order of the Phoenix, “Seen and Unforeseen,” and we also have some Muggle Mail. But first, just wanted to let everybody know we did our third installment of Quizzitch Live on Sunday. We’re actually recording this episode on Saturday, but I assume Quizzitch Live 3 went really well.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: Oh, yeah. It was fantastic.
Andrew: Quizzitch 3: The Prisoner of Knowledge. Now, Eric will be here for that. He said, “I just want one MuggleCast thing to do this weekend instead of two,” so he picked Quizzitch.
Micah: Yeah, I mean, it’s his birthday, to be fair. It was on Thursday, so he can have the week off. And we get Pat, so I mean, honestly, it’s a win-win.
[Andrew laughs]
Pat: Aww.
Andrew: Eric gets a break; Pat comes on the show. It’s great.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, and speaking of Eric, he had that idea for the Neville Longbottom playlist, and we now have over 60 songs in the playlist on Spotify, so we’ll have another link in the show notes if you want to check that out and get pumped up with songs Neville may listen to while kicking butt in Dumbledore’s Army.
Micah: Can you do one at random? Or am I putting you on the spot?
Andrew: Umm…
Micah: I’m interested to see what people added.
Andrew: How about this song? Can you hear this?
[“Work Bitch” by Britney Spears plays]
Laura: Yep.
Andrew: I’m going to skip ahead.
You want a Bugatti?
You want a Maserati?
You better work, bitch
You want a Lamborghini?
Sip martinis?
Look hot in a bikini?
You better work, bitch
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: You know who this is, Micah?
Micah: I do not.
Andrew: [laughs] Do you want to take a guess?
Micah: I’d say, like, Kesha.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Close. Britney Spears.
Laura and Micah: Really?
Micah: Britney? Wow, what happened to her?
Andrew: Yeah. Oh, Laura, you didn’t know either?
Laura: No.
Andrew: That was “Work Bitch” by Britney…
Laura: I didn’t know that she could get any more auto-tuned.
Andrew: Oh, come on. That’s a good song. I think that’s off of Britney Jean.
Laura: Oh, okay.
Andrew: Anyway. So yeah, check out that playlist and feel inspired.
Listener Feedback
Andrew: Here’s a fun question, turning to Muggle Mail now. This is from Mira.
“Hi, MuggleCast! I am REALLY enjoying your show, and I am currently listening to some recent ones on repeat! Yesterday I actually ran into my mom’s parked car on a bike while listening to it!”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: Wow.
Laura: I hope you’re okay! And your mom’s car, too.
Micah: Yeah, be safe, please? Helmet, I hope?
Andrew: Helmet, maybe some training wheels… [laughs]
Laura: This is scary because we had feedback from someone a few months ago about how they got into a car accident while they were listening to us, right?
Andrew: Yes, and didn’t we deem that episode cursed?
[Laura laughs]
Micah: Probably.
Andrew: I hope Mira wasn’t listening to that episode. If she was, that’d be crazy. Anyway, she says,
“I was wondering what you think would happen at Hogwarts because of COVID-19? Keep doing what you’re doing. I absolutely love the podcast; it is like having a Harry Potter fan as a friend (which I don’t have, just my middle school English teacher)! Thank you so much!”
Aww. So how would Hogwarts deal with COVID-19? Would there be a quarantine of some sort at the school?
Pat: I just think they’d all be walking around with Bubble-Head Charms on.
Andrew and Laura: Yeah.
Laura: Agreed.
Andrew: Would they be confined to their dormitories?
Laura: No. I mean, we’ve already established that Hogwarts is a security nightmare, so I don’t know that they would quarantine to the extent that we are in the Muggle world. But I think you also have a note here from WizardingWorld.com about wizarding abilities to heal Muggle illnesses?
Andrew: Yeah, so J.K. Rowling wrote about illnesses and disabilities way back in the day on Potter-No-More.com, and she said that wizards can deal with Muggle illnesses; they can deal with them easily, so in the case of COVID-19, they would be able to avoid it, I think. However, serious injuries and illnesses that are exclusive to the wizarding world, they have to really fight those.
Micah: That makes sense. They would be smarter than us.
Pat: I feel like quarantining would qualify more towards the professors, because the students really can’t leave. They probably wouldn’t be able to go to Hogsmeade, but the professors can come and go from the castle as much as they want. I think quarantining would really only apply to them.
Micah: And to be honest, sounds like Umbridge is just her own version of COVID-19 with everything she’s doing to lock down the school.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Pat: Accurate.
Andrew: But Hogwarts is also very large, so there’s more room to spread out, I feel. It’s way bigger than any school we know, so I think they’d be able to keep six feet from each other in the corridors and whatnot. Anyway, this next email is from Meg, who is actually Eric’s girlfriend, and I thought, “Well, since it’s Eric’s birthday weekend, we have to include this.”
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: Meg said, “Happy Thursday,” which, by the way, was Eric’s birthday. “I have ruminated on some similarities between Harry Potter and Rubeus Hagrid,” getting back to our discussion from last week. And these are pretty funny. She said, “Untidy hair, not so great with the ladies…”
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: “… friends with a big black dog, can both see Thestrals, both think Lucius Malfoy is a grade A you-know-what, both think Draco Malfoy is a sniveling punk, and personal history with Tom Riddle.”
Laura: Yeah.
Micah: She should be on the show. I mean, these are better answers than Eric gave.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: They were clever. They were clever. We have a new sponsor here at MuggleCast, another clothing recommendation for you, actually: MeUndies.
[Ad break]
Andrew: Maybe Dobby should order some of these, or another house-elf.
Micah: Maybe Harry should give them to Dobby.
Andrew: There you go.
Laura: Is that how we’re setting house-elves free now? Giving them MeUndies?
Micah: With MeUndies, yeah.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Free your house-elf with MeUndies.
Chapter by Chapter: Seven-Word Summary
Andrew: Now it’s time for Chapter by Chapter, and this week we’re discussing Order of the Phoenix Chapter 26, “Seen and Unforeseen.” And we’ll start as always with our Seven-Word Summary, and Pat, you will kick things off. Try not to start with “Harry.”
Pat: Okay, let’s start with… dreams…
[Seven-Word Summary music plays]
Andrew: … enter…
[pause]
Andrew: Laura?
Micah: Did we lose Laura?
Andrew: I think we lost Laura. [laughs]
Laura: Can you hear me now?
Andrew: Oh, yeah. There you are.
Laura: Okay… the…
Micah: … mind…
Pat: … through…
Andrew: Dreams enter the mind through…
[Seven-Word Summary music ends]
Laura: We’re out of time. That’s it.
Andrew: Well, I know. We also couldn’t hear you, so I feel like we should… [laughs]
Laura: Oh, give ourselves a few seconds?
[Seven-Word Summary music plays]
Andrew: Dreams enter the mind through… I don’t even… I have no clue where this could possibly go. Snape’s…
Laura: [laughs] … lessons.
Andrew: There we go. Okay, cool.
Pat: That’s pretty good.
Micah: I like it.
[Seven-Word Summary music ends]
Micah: It’ll suffice for today.
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion
Micah: All right, let’s talk about Chapter 26, “Seen and Unforeseen,” and we’re not going to go through it in order; I broke it out a little bit differently. I wanted to start off by talking about The Quibbler, and we all know Harry had his interview with Rita Skeeter towards the end of the last chapter, and immediately there’s a little bit of concern that Harry’s story is being held for a feature on Crumple-Horned Snorkacks.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Yeah, it’s funny. It’s Luna; it’s the Lovegoods. But I think at least as a reader, should we be concerned for the legitimacy of this publication if we weren’t already? Given that Harry’s story is a little bit more important than these beasts.
Andrew: Right, and I think it serves as one more reminder that maybe Harry didn’t make the best decision. He finds this out, that they’re waiting on this feature on these creatures, and Harry might be like, “You know, maybe this wasn’t the best idea. I have this big interview. I’m waiting for it to come out. It’s going to change everything, potentially, and they’re obsessed with the Crumple-Horned Snorkacks.” What strikes me about this is that Xenophilius seems to not really understand the enormity of this interview, and I would think he would want to drop everything and prioritize this interview with Harry.
Laura: I think from a reader perspective, though, this serves to make the payoff that much better when we see how this is received later on in the chapter.
Andrew: Exactly.
Micah: I agree. Speaking of Rita Skeeter, how much legitimacy is she providing here to the story? We know The Quibbler is not the best resource for information, but Rita provides another level. We know that she was a bit of a tabloid writer for the Daily Prophet, but I actually think that her involvement in this lends a lot of legitimacy to Harry’s story.
Andrew and Pat: Yeah.
Pat: I agree. She had such a strong following in the previous book; how many people email…? Or not email. Geez. [laughs] How many people sent Hermione owls just berating her when they thought that she was with Harry and all that kind of stuff, just because of something that Rita wrote? So Rita has a following, and I think that that helps the story immensely.
Andrew: It’s a shame that we didn’t get to read Rita’s story, because you also wonder if there are some Rita-isms in this article. Presumably not, because Hermione’s got her under her thumb, but I would have really loved to have read it. We just get the headline and that’s it.
Pat: Yeah, and the fact that she wasn’t allowed to use her Quick Quotes Quill.
Micah: And it’s a knock against the Daily Prophet as well, right? We talked about them in the last episode and how they’re really being a mouthpiece for the Ministry, but the fact that one of their more prominent writers goes over to a publication like The Quibbler to tell a story like this is really a bit of a knock on them.
Andrew: Yeah, it is.
Laura: Agreed.
Micah: Now, Pat touched on all of the owls showing up, and Harry gets a number of pieces of feedback from some readers at The Quibbler, but it wasn’t long before Umbridge shows up at the breakfast table to ask what it was that they were all looking at, and man, is she pissed.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: That was the ultimate mic drop moment for Harry. It says that he “tossed” The Quibbler at her. I just envision him…
Pat: Oh, I love that moment.
Laura: Yeah. Oh, it was great.
Micah: But she ends up giving him a week’s worth of detention and banning him from Hogsmeade, and I guess in Harry’s mind, it was all worth it. But I kind of wondered here, does she have the authority to pass down this punishment? She hasn’t even read the article. Presumably, she’s only seen the headline, so she doesn’t really know what it says, and it seems like a bit of unfair punishment.
Laura: Yeah, I think that she doesn’t really need to read the article to have a good idea of what it says, given Harry’s history of trying to out this information. Something that I think might have been a missed opportunity, though, is I understand that the article was about Voldemort’s return and the Death Eaters, but it also would have been a great opportunity for Harry to out Umbridge’s detention practices. Like, “Hey, Dolores Umbridge is literally causing physical distress on students during detentions, and I have the scars to prove it.”
Andrew: Oh, yeah. That would have been great. That should have been a follow-up interview in The Quibbler; “Now the tell-all about Umbridge.”
Micah: Yeah, she would have gotten sacked at the end of the chapter instead of Trelawney.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Yeah, you’d think so, because parents would read this and they would not be cool with it at all. By the way, there was a really great line from Fred in the scene where Umbridge comes up to them and asks what’s going on, and Fred just says, “‘Is that a crime now?’ said Fred loudly. ‘Getting mail?'” [laughs] It was just such a quick retort.
Micah: Yeah, and kind of to the point that Lee Jordan brought up in the last chapter, Umbridge shouldn’t be talking to Harry about anything other than classes.
Andrew: Yeah, exactly, Umbridge. Follow your own rules, Umbridge.
Laura: But she’s the [loftily] High Inquisitor, so she can do what she wants.
Micah: But I like that idea, Laura, about putting in The Quibbler in this article about how she is really physically harming students, and to the point, there’s evidence to prove it. They could’ve put a picture of the back of Harry’s hand, or the back of Lee Jordan’s hand, or anybody else who’s been in detention with her over the course of the last couple of months. There’s physical evidence. So yeah, I don’t think Fudge would have had any choice but to get rid of her.
Laura: And it’s also very much related to the Voldemort narrative, because Umbridge started doing this to stop Harry from talking about Voldemort.
Micah: So of course, it’s not long until Umbridge comes up with another Educational Decree, Number 27, which basically states that the possession of The Quibbler results in a student’s expulsion. Now, when I’m reading this as an adult, versus when I read it however long ago it was, I’m thinking about things like freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and they’re both being denied here. Laura, what are your thoughts here about banning certain reading materials? We could even throw in how a lot of schools around the US banned Harry Potter for a period of time because they thought it inspired witchcraft, which is crazy.
Laura: Yeah, yeah. This is very true, and you can also connect it to… again, I know I harp on this a lot, but there have been numerous examples throughout history where oppressive, tyrannical governments target institutions of education in order to prevent people from broadening their minds and potentially becoming adversaries of said tyrannical government. So Umbridge is really bringing down that iron fist-like tyranny on Hogwarts, for sure.
Micah: Totally. But as is the case with anything that you try and ban, especially in the case of an article, if you’re looking to try and prevent people from reading it, the worst thing you could possibly do is ban it, because now everybody is going to want to read it, and that’s exactly what ends up happening. And similarly, Andrew, you actually got a note from one of your listeners… [laughs] One of our listeners. She’s not just your listener.
Andrew: She only listens to me on MuggleCast.
Micah: Yeah, clearly. Josie wrote in to actually make a pretty interesting comparison to what happens here with The Quibbler article.
Andrew: Right, so as Hermione points out, everybody wants to read this interview because Umbridge banned it, and Josie writes,
“I know this is several years late, but I wanted to share my thoughts with you about JKR’s #Wormtaily tweet accusing Hypable of posting Cursed Child spoilers. I completely understand Andrew’s reaction to the situation, but as the conversation continued, I was surprised that none of the other hosts or the listeners mentioned or connected the situation to Chapter 26 of Order of the Phoenix. I think JKR intended for her tweet about Hypable to do exactly what Umbridge unintentionally did with her Educational Decree about the Quibbler. I think she knew there was no possible way she could ever keep people from reading spoilers about Cursed Child, so she did what she could to direct fans toward the harmless teasers on Hypable in the hopes that it would distract them away from the blatant spoilers posted in other places. Rather than condemning Hypable, I think it was actually more of a sneaky endorsement.”
Andrew: [laughs] She’s absolutely right, because for anyone who doesn’t remember when J.K. Rowling called out my website Hypable for posting Cursed Child spoilers, the thing was we had only posted what Houses Albus and Scorpius and Rose were Sorted into! Completely mild spoilers, and we hid them behind the headlines. It’s not like we went on Twitter and said, “Guess what, y’all? Albus Severus is a Slytherin. What a shocker, am I right?” No, we didn’t do that. So yeah, I think this is a very interesting theory. I think she did encourage people to go to Hypable on purpose, despite saying “Don’t visit Hypable,” and then directed people away from… God, what sites were…? I guess Tumblr. Tumblr was a thing back in 2016. There were spoilers all over Tumblr, very detailed spoilers, and it kind of ruined the story, because you’re just getting all these out-of-context spoilers about the play, like, “Bellatrix and Voldemort had a baby.” [laughs] You read that out of context, it’s crazy. Or you hear about all the Time-Turner usage, it’s crazy. So yeah, good theory, Josie.
Pat: Yeah, I love this theory. I would love to know if this was something that Jo had in the back of her mind.
Andrew: By the way, everybody, my birthday is coming up, and I still do not have a framed print of that tweet from J.K. Rowling, so if anybody would like to do that for my birthday, I want that and a vibrating broomstick.
[Laura and Pat laugh]
Micah: We’re on it. Don’t worry. Well, I think we’re on the vibrating broomstick. Laura, Eric, and I will do our best to take care of that.
Andrew: Yes. Coordinate with Pat.
Micah: Okay, yeah. After the show, we’ll work on that for you, Andrew.
[Laura and Pat laugh]
Laura: Yep. We’ll wrap it up just like Harry’s Firebolt was wrapped up when it arrived at the table…
Andrew: Yeah, right.
Laura: … and everybody was supposed to not know what it was.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: Yeah. Make sure the batteries are not included, because we don’t want the delivery person to accidentally turn it on.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: Speaking of this comparison, Andrew, one other thing about The Quibbler that I thought was cool… and thanks to Pat for correcting this. That’s why, Pat, it’s great to have him on the show.
Andrew: Fact checking.
[Pat laughs]
Micah: Yeah, I know. The students actually bewitch The Quibbler so that it looks like the pages of it are actually pages from their textbooks, and I thought this was actually pretty cool.
Andrew: Yeah, that was a very clever way of hiding it.
Laura: Yeah, it’s ingenious.
Micah: It actually reminded me of like a show nowadays where – and I’m sure there’s a million examples – something breaks on social media, and then you could have all these different cutscenes of the girls are in the bathroom and they’re all… I mean, even Hermione mentions this, right? All the stalls are closed, but people are in there reading it, and then in the hallways, these kids are bewitching their textbooks to look like… so they’re all consuming it, right? It’s kind of comparable to nowadays. Imagine if social media existed during this.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: People would get alerts on their magical cell phones, or… I don’t know how that works.
Andrew: And then Umbridge would ban Twitter and all social media platforms. All phones, actually.
Micah: But there is some positive reaction. We talked a lot about the negative reaction, and Harry getting detention. Sprout ends up giving points to Gryffindor, just kind of out of nowhere. Flitwick gives Harry some candy. Trelawney reverses course on Harry’s death omen prediction and says that he’s going to live a very long life and have… I think it was 12 kids?
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Seamus comes around, right? He says that he now believes Harry, and even sent the article off to his mom. And Cho… I mean, Cho wants to be boyfriend-girlfriend again.
Andrew: Woohoo!
Micah: So there’s some positive that comes of this article.
Andrew: Time to try holding hands again. Yeah, there’s a lot of positive that comes from this article, and it was really funny to see J.K. Rowling describing the ways that the teachers were slyly patting Harry on the back.
Micah: Yeah. But there’s the other side where there was some negative reaction from certain students, including those kids who Harry named their fathers as being Death Eaters. And I know this was supposed to be a tell-all article, but did Harry maybe not think it all the way through, knowing that he goes to school with Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle? And they introduced Theodore Nott in this chapter as well, or make mention of him again, and Harry, of course, gave his father’s name as being a Death Eater too. Was this a smart choice on his part?
Laura: I think so.
Pat: I think it is, because it provides more legitimacy to the story. If he would have just said, “Oh, there were other prominent people in society there,” that wouldn’t have done anything. I’ve been in this situation before, too, where sometimes you just have to lay out all of the facts and not worry about the repercussions, because it matters that much to get the truth out there.
Laura: And now people like Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle – the daddy versions of Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle – they all… [laughs] That was maybe not the best way to phrase it.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: But now they are all under a magnifying glass, so everything they do is going to be scrutinized in some way. So I think that this is a good thing.
Andrew: Yeah, and remember, Hermione said that they actually can’t get mad at Harry right now, because that would mean they violated one of these decrees by reading the interview. So it was pretty brilliant.
Micah: Yeah, that’s a great point.
Andrew: Umbridge kind of stepped in it, in a way.
Micah: She did. Yeah, she’s starting to lose it a little bit in terms of her reaction.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: She’s not as well thought through, I don’t think, as she has been in prior decrees in prior chapters. She has a very knee-jerk reaction, especially to this decree, and as we’ve discussed, it only ends up causing more people to read it anyway.
Andrew: Right.
Micah: But one other thing to touch on that happened at the beginning of this chapter, when everybody is having breakfast, is that Harry and Hermione are talking about his date with Cho and how it went, and Hermione starts to give Harry some advice about how he should have handled the situation. And I’m sitting here… I’m sympathizing with Harry, I’m sympathizing with his frustration, because I think that she could have been a little bit more helpful in giving Harry some information before, as opposed to sitting here now looking back on it saying, “Well, you actually should have handled the situation this way.” How about, Hermione, you shouldn’t have asked him to even come see you when you knew he was going to be out on a date with Cho? How about that?
Andrew: Yeah. Problem A, I think Hermione was so distracted by this opportunity to have Rita interview Harry that she didn’t think this through, the Harry/Cho date. Problem B, I don’t think Hermione’s excuse would have even worked on Cho, because Hermione says, in hindsight, “You should have said it was really annoying, but I, Hermione, made you promise to come along to the Three Broomsticks.” I don’t think that would have made Cho feel any better, because Harry is still picking Hermione over Cho. He doesn’t have to go meet Hermione, no matter how annoying she is. He can be annoying back by not going on Valentine’s Day to the Three Broomsticks with another girl. So I don’t think Hermione’s excuse was a good one either in hindsight.
Pat: But Hermione also says that he should have had Cho come with him, which I do think would have been good, because Harry’s never really said the entire story to Cho because she always ends up crying, so she’d be able to sit there and listen to the interview as well, and really have that, I guess, sort of public situation of hearing the story where maybe she’d be able to understand it better, set aside her emotions a little bit, to really understand what Harry went through.
Laura: Yeah, and I think if she had come and realized the importance, the magnitude of what Harry was doing here, she wouldn’t have been upset anymore. She would have realized, “Oh, this isn’t about meeting another girl. This is about getting the truth about what happened to Cedric out there.” But I do think, though… I agree, I think Hermione could have prepped Harry a little better for this, but I think that her explanation of how this could have been different, I think it’s pretty on point. Cho is going through a lot, which of course amplifies things, but she’s a bit superficial, right? She wanted to go on this very showy Valentine’s Day date where they went to this place that was just overwhelmingly romantic and had couples making out all over the place. She really was laying it on thick with that, right? And I think that if Harry had really laid it on thick in return and been like, “Ugh, God, yeah, I just have to do this. Please come with me; it’ll make it so much better if you’re there,” I think that would have worked.
Pat: Yeah. And I mean, honestly, Harry is dumb in some situations, and Hermione has been his best friend for five years now. She knows how Harry’s mind works. She should have known that he wasn’t going to come up with something to tell Cho, so Hermione should have laid this story out beforehand.
Andrew: Amy, who is listening live on Patreon right now, has an interesting theory. She says, “Hermione is friends with Ginny, and she knows Ginny likes Harry. Did she do it to undermine the date with Cho?”
Pat: Ooh.
Andrew: I kind of like that.
Laura: I don’t think so.
[Andrew laughs]
Pat: But at this point, Ginny has been dating other guys, so I don’t know.
Andrew: True.
Laura: And Hermione, if we recall… I think we find out in Book 6, Hermione was the one telling Ginny she needed to move on.
Micah: Hermione is just a matchmaker. We don’t realize it.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: Well, one thing she doesn’t like – or at least appears not to like – in this chapter is Quidditch, and she says that it creates bad blood between the Hogwarts Houses. This pisses off Fred and George and Harry, and what do we make of this? Hermione seems like she’s pretty passionate about Quidditch; at least she’s not talking down on it through all the books prior to this, so what do we think is causing her to be so angry with it right now? And I don’t disagree with the point about creating bad blood, but is it bad blood, or is it just rivalry? Is it sports? I don’t really think that Quidditch by itself creates bad blood. I think the whole idea of Sorting students into different Houses, that could create bad blood, and Quidditch is just an extension of that.
Pat: I think her frustration with Quidditch right now is mostly stemming from OWLs, because they’re coming up. We’re getting towards the end of the school year. She’s seen how they’ve all prioritized Quidditch over their studies, especially for OWLs, so I think she’s just over it and wants to focus on her academics and thinks that the boys should too.
Laura: Yep. I was going to say she’s really exaggerating what she thinks is more important here, and I think it’s causing her to diminish the importance of Quidditch.
Andrew: I also agree with you, Micah, to a point, about yes, this is life, this is sports, there are rivalries, but I’m thinking about this in terms of going through high school myself. There weren’t matches against other grade levels in my high school, for example. It was against another high school. You’re pitting people against each other in the same school, which I think amplifies the tension and the rivalry and the potential drama.
Micah: Right, but doesn’t that all stem from the fact that you’re Sorting them into Houses when they first get there?
Andrew: Yeah, that too.
Micah: Quidditch is just the byproduct – or one of the byproducts – of the fact that this is how the school operates, right?
Andrew: Right, right.
Micah: It’s four Houses against each other. Do you think it gets this intense if people from different Houses are playing Gobstones against each other?
Andrew: [laughs] No, but there’s a cup involved here.
Pat: True, and don’t the Quidditch points go towards the House Cup at the end of the year too?
Andrew: I don’t know. Maybe they get some points towards it? But another way to think of this is, again, this high school example. We are all one. We all had a mascot in high school, right? Mine was the renegade, which has not aged well, but we were one renegade. At Hogwarts, you don’t hear them saying “We are one Hogwarts.” We are Gryffindor, we’re Slytherin, we’re Ravenclaw. They’re splitting people up.
Micah: And that’s interesting because especially in Goblet of Fire, you see more alignments, I think, taking place between these international schools with the Hogwarts Houses than you do within Hogwarts itself, right? There is no unifying factor, maybe with the exception of Cedric. Everybody loves him, even Slytherin. But Slytherin only loves Cedric because they don’t like Harry. So I just feel like there’s more bonding that’s taking place with Durmstrang and Beauxbatons than there is with Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. But again, that’s all what it’s about, I guess. It’s about competition, and everybody’s competing against each other. But I think also for Harry it’s a sore point, because he’s looking through the lens of the fact that this is yet another thing that he is barred from doing because of Umbridge. And he even says he would have rather jumped off the Astronomy Tower than admit it to Hermione; he would have given any number of Galleons not to care about Quidditch either. But obviously it’s something that he cares deeply about; it’s been something he’s been good at since he’s gotten to Hogwarts. And I love the jumping off the Astronomy Tower reference, because we know what happens in the next book.
Andrew: [laughs] Was that on purpose? Did J.K. Rowling do that on purpose? I hope not.
Micah: Well, doesn’t…? Is it Fred or George in the next book that also makes a similar reference to the Astronomy Tower? I don’t know if it’s just a running joke at Hogwarts about jumping or falling off the Astronomy Tower, but maybe that’s what gave J.K. Rowling the idea for Half-Blood Prince to have Dumbledore fall off of it. I don’t know.
Andrew: It could be a…
Laura: Maybe it’s native advertising for the hit new ride at Universal Studios. [laughs]
Andrew: I agree. I completely agree. Dumbledore’s Magical Astronomy Tower of Terror Free Fall. Also, I just did a quick Google, “tallest tower at Hogwarts,” and according to Google, it’s the Astronomy Tower. So maybe it is just a running joke at school about the tallest tower at Hogwarts. Since that’s the one, that’s why we keep hearing about it.
Laura: Something I thought was kind of a fun throwback to Prisoner of Azkaban, though, in regards to Quidditch: Gryffindor makes massive Quidditch comebacks in Prisoner of Azkaban and in Order of the Phoenix, so this is just another one of those connecting the thread moments between these books. In Prisoner of Azkaban, Oliver Wood is lamenting the fact that Gryffindor has not won the House Cup in seven years, and they finally do it in Prisoner of Azkaban. And then we know the comeback that’s coming for the Gryffindor team later on in Order of the Phoenix, which is pretty satisfying given how badly Quidditch goes in this chapter.
Micah: Definitely. So let’s switch gears a little bit; let’s talk about some of Harry’s dreams. There’s two of them that happen in this chapter, and the first one is a little bit trippy. I don’t know what Harry was eating or drinking or smoking before he went to bed, but…
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: He was smoking stress. He’s stressed. And happy, but also stressed.
Micah: Maybe that’s it, yeah. Dream number one is about Neville and Professor Sprout waltzing around the Room of Requirement while McGonagall plays the bagpipes. Sounds like a start to a fanfiction that I don’t want to read.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: When I read this for the first time in 2003, this confirmed to me that Neville would become the Herbology teacher and that Minerva would become headmaster. Because I study dreams, and I know that if anyone’s ever playing bagpipes, that means they have a bright future in a high position ahead of them. And if you waltz as a student, you become the teacher who you are also waltzing with. Confirmed.
Laura: Wow, this is some Trelawney level dream interpretation happening here.
Micah: Yeah, this is…
Andrew: [imitating Trelawney] “Thank you, Laura!”
[Laura laugh]
Pat: I just think that somehow, in Harry’s mind, he did the unfathomable and found a way to be able to waltz to bagpipe music.
[Micah laughs]
Pat: Which… it’s impossible. So I don’t know how he did it, but he did.
Andrew: I’m so glad Pat was on an episode where he got to say “bag” in his Wisconsin accent for everybody.
[Pat laughs]
Andrew: “Bihg-pipes.”
Micah: Andrew, I thought that was… there was so much confidence behind what you just said, I actually believe it, so…
Andrew: [laughs] Good. Let’s move on then. Don’t even debate it.
[Pat laughs]
Micah: What do you have to say about the doors afterwards? Harry walks out and then he’s in that corridor that he has been seeing for quite some time. I didn’t make much of that. I really enjoyed your interpretation, though, of the…
Andrew: Yeah, the doors were boring. Neville and Sprout waltzing…
Micah: Yeah, who cares about the doors? We’ve seen them before.
Andrew: Yeah. Blah, blah, blah. Think of something new.
Micah: Yeah. All right, let’s go on to the second dream, where Harry is actually Voldemort. This was cool.
Andrew: [laughs] Cool?!
Micah: Yeah!
Andrew: You’re sick.
Micah: First he was Nagini; now he is Voldemort. He’s just… I mean, that was a quick jump. I mean, he didn’t even go to a Death Eater in between. He’s Voldemort.
Andrew: [laughs] That escalated quickly.
Micah: Yeah, totally. And we see a scene play out between Voldemort and Rookwood, who we know from the last chapter has just escaped from Azkaban, and he is providing information to him about the Department of Mysteries. And we learn that there was a little bit of a misstep on the part of one of the other Death Eaters named Avery, who provided information to Voldemort that Broderick Bode would have been able to retrieve the prophecy, and Rookwood is very adamant about the fact that that could not be the case, so Voldemort is kind of pissed off that he’s been wasting time over the course of the last few months to no avail. And there’s some detective work that’s done on the part of Hermione a little bit later on in the chapter, but we do learn that Lucius Malfoy placed Broderick Bode under the Imperius Curse to try and retrieve the prophecy, and if he had come to in the hospital, he would have likely been able to provide too much information to, let’s say, the Ministry, assuming the Ministry would believe him about what was going on. And we also learn Sturgis Podmore was Voldemort’s first attempt earlier in the summer to gain access to the Hall of Prophecy, so there’s a lot of underhanded work going on here by Voldemort, as to be expected, but Hermione hears all this, and I think she makes a mistake. She says that Harry shouldn’t tell anybody. I disagree.
Andrew: Yeah, I agree for a couple reasons; one, for the reasons we’ve discussed over the past few months, but also, what information do we think Rookwood is giving Voldemort here? Could it potentially be that Voldemort needs to lure Harry into the Department of Mysteries? Because if so, this is an awful time for Hermione to be like, “Let’s just forget about all this.” Of course, Hermione doesn’t know, and they don’t even know about the prophecy, and that’s what Voldemort is after. But still, the timing of this is crazy. So what do you guys think Rookwood might actually be telling Voldemort?
Pat: I think he’s just telling him that one of the people who prophecies are about, they’re the only ones that can actually remove it without having anything happen to them.
Laura: Yep, agreed. And I had a question here: Is knowledge about prophecy really that locked down? Obviously people wouldn’t know the intricacies of prophecies, and being able to access the Hall of Prophecies is obviously something that is very specialized; you probably have to have some DOD level of clearance to do it. But it seems like just from a public knowledge perspective, knowing, “Oh, yeah, only people that prophecies are about can touch the prophecies.” It’s surprising to me that that’s not more general knowledge.
Andrew: Right, or even something Voldemort would know by now. I mean, okay, yeah, Neville might not know that because he’s Neville, but Voldemort, he should have learned about that a while back.
Micah: Don’t hate on Neville, man. He’s getting into his…
Laura: He’s getting it. Doing that waltz.
Andrew: He works, bitch. He waltzes to “Work Bitch.”
[Everyone laughs]
Pat: Well, I can kind of see, though, that that kind of general knowledge about prophecy is going away because Seers are becoming more and more rare. A lot of people consider Divination and Seers to be just kind of, I don’t know, wishy-washy magic, so I think the legitimacy of being a Seer is going away, and I think that just is translating now into the population where people don’t really care about prophecies anymore.
Micah: I also think it is possible that Voldemort could know this, but yet he wants to make an attempt where he doesn’t have to physically take himself to the Ministry and risk exposure so he’s trying to utilize somebody like Broderick Bode who works in that department. And maybe there’s some special thing about Unspeakables, that they’re able to retrieve these prophecies without the actual person being there. So I think there is the potential for Voldemort to know this information, but he just doesn’t want to take such a high risk at this point. That said, he seems pretty pissed off that Avery gave him the wrong information, so I do think there’s definitely some lack of information that’s being provided here. And if this is, in fact, the moment where Voldemort makes the decision that he’s going to have to lure Harry there, because it’s probably easier for Harry to retrieve the prophecy again than it is for him to risk exposure, it’s a huge mistake on the part of Hermione to tell Harry not to share this information.
Andrew: Right.
Micah: Because again, this is a recently escaped Death Eater from Azkaban who is providing Voldemort with important information. And I also wonder, too, Snape kind of gets a glimpse of this, and how much information is he taking back to Dumbledore and others about what he’s seeing inside of Harry’s head? I would think Dumbledore would expect a report.
Laura: Yep.
Andrew: Yeah, especially if Snape sees something like this. He doesn’t really care about Harry being pushed into the toilet by Dudley, but this, this is important.
Micah: Totally, and I think that takes us to these Occlumency lessons.
Andrew: Well, I also just want to say goodbye, Avery. I never liked your paper products. Kind of glad that you’re getting out of here.
Micah: [laughs] Yeah, I think he is done for.
Andrew: He’s done for. I can never figure out the labels; which are which? I don’t get the numbering scheme.
Laura: [laughs] Well, see, what you don’t realize, Andrew, is that this was Avery’s second calling. After things went south with Voldemort, he decided to go form his own label-making company.
Andrew: I see.
Laura: And he’s apparently just as bad at that as he was at his last job.
Andrew: The envelopes say 8160, but then there’s also 4140. Which is it? I can’t tell which template I’m supposed to be using!
[Laura laughs]
Micah: How do we think that Harry is doing progress-wise with Occlumency? Doesn’t seem like he’s doing all that well until a little bit later on in this chapter.
Andrew and Laura: Yeah.
Andrew: Not great, Bob. I mean, this is an important step forward because he can penetrate Snape’s mind, and even Snape is surprised by this. But no, he has not been progressing very well, and it’s partly because of the teacher and partly because Harry… well, Snape is right. Harry might not be taking this as seriously as he should be. But I do equally blame Snape, if not more so.
Laura: Yeah, I mean, I think part of the blame also… I mean, I think it rests on Dumbledore too. You can trace Harry’s level of interest in this to the fact that he feels shut out and he feels isolated, and given that all of this concerns him, the fact that he’s not getting very much information kind of leaves him out at sea. He’s adrift, and he’s like, “Okay, I need to close my mind down to Voldemort because… I’m not really sure why, what he would be trying to do.” And I think that that, honestly, just doesn’t give Harry the buy-in that he needs in order to focus on this.
Micah: Yeah. I mean, he’s definitely in a weaker state, too – we’ve talked about this – after each of these lessons.
Andrew: Right.
Micah: And you would hope that he would be getting stronger as a result, right? Even from one lesson to the next, he’s learning how to recover. But going back to that memory that he sees of Voldemort and Rookwood, I do wonder if he is, in fact, sharing this information with Dumbledore, because it’s clear that Harry is not able to. I don’t think it’s a matter of, at least still at this point, not wanting to close his mind; I just think he’s not able to. And should we expect a 15-year-old to be able to close his mind to certain thoughts, especially when you have somebody as powerful as Voldemort who is now aware of this connection and can easily manipulate it? I think there’s too high of an expectation put on Harry.
Andrew and Laura: Yeah.
Laura: Definitely a significant burden on his shoulders. The other thing that I’ll observe is when Harry was doing his private lessons with Lupin on how to fight the Dementors, Lupin always had chocolate on hand, and as we’ve seen, consuming chocolate helps to sort of bolster your mental and emotional strength. Snape isn’t doing anything to build Harry up after these sessions, so Harry is just getting torn down again and again and again, and it’s weakening him over time.
Andrew: Give. Harry. A. Scalp. Massage.
Laura: [laughs] Give Harry chocolate, man. Easy fix.
Micah: It’s so true, though, because there’s really just only one moment of recognition, and it’s after Harry is able to penetrate Snape’s mind, where he seems somewhat impressed by what Harry has done. But that’s just a fleeting moment and it’s gone, because Snape’s reaction after the fact is just “Let’s go for another round, Harry,” and Harry knows that he’s about to pay for what he was just able to do, which, again, that’s not the dynamic that should be going on here, right? To your point about Lupin – and again, we know that they’re very different people – but Lupin had a way of building Harry up, as you said. Snape just seems like he’s been given a task that he really doesn’t want to do, but he’s going to use every opportunity to his advantage to take down Harry and make him feel even worse than before he walked in the door.
Laura: There was also just a nice little throwback here that I wanted to call out: When Snape was seeing the flashes of Harry’s memories, one of the memories was from Prisoner of Azkaban where the Dementors are descending on all of them, and the memory specifically at one point focuses on Snape, so Snape is seeing himself from Harry’s vantage point in Prisoner of Azkaban. I thought that was pretty cool.
Micah: Yeah, very cool. Harry also enters the Department of Mysteries, and I was wondering how? How is this possible in everything that’s going on right now, that this memory…? I don’t know, really… a vision? I’m not sure what to call it… just kind of pops up, and Harry I don’t think has experienced this before, right? This is something completely new.
Pat: I think it’s because we know that Voldemort is very skilled at Legilimency, so he’s either gotten those visions or thoughts, whatever, from Avery or Rookwood previously, and because Harry and Voldemort have that connection, he’s probably seen it somewhere in his subconscious, seen that from Voldemort’s mind.
Micah: Cool.
Pat: And that’s why he’s able to move forward in it. And I think at this point, Voldemort is starting to realize that connection a little bit, and maybe has started to, I guess, give Harry more information to move forward.
Micah: So it’s like he’s feeding him certain memories or certain visions.
Pat: Yeah, and I think it… or it could be the part that Harry is curious; Harry wants to see where it’s going, so he just may have accessed that from Voldemort’s mind, just because his subconscious is like, “I want to go further through these doors,” so he got that information that way.
Andrew: My other guess would have been he did get through those doors during a dream, but for whatever reason, he just didn’t remember that part. Maybe he blacked out within a dream once he got through the doors. Because yeah, this doesn’t make much sense to me. I like Pat’s theories, though.
Micah: Yeah, I like Pat’s theories as well.
Andrew: Okay, we’ll go with his.
Pat: I am canon.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Micah: Well, we touched a little bit upon how Harry is able to defend himself in one moment in these lessons, and it’s a bit of payback for Snape, though we know that the memories that Snape definitely would not want to be accessed are being put in the Pensieve. So it’s interesting, though, that he’s willing to have these memories even be viewed, even if by accident, when Harry throws up that spell.
Andrew: Yeah, but what is he going to do? Take out every single memory from his head? That would be probably impossible.
Micah: That’s true. But we do get a bit of insight into Snape’s childhood; it says that “a hook-nosed man was shouting at a cowering woman, while a small dark-haired boy cried in a corner… A greasy-haired teenager sat alone in a dark bedroom, pointing his wand at the ceiling, shooting down flies… A girl was laughing as a scrawny boy tried to mount a bucking broom stick.”
Andrew: “A boy was transforming into a vampire, to his father’s delight.”
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Laura: Well, the problem with this broomstick was it was a vibrating broomstick. If only he had known.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: A bucking broom… yeah, is that like when you try and ride a bull at one of those bars? It just tosses you around?
Laura: It’s like, “Get off.”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: But yeah, Snape seems very vulnerable in these memories that Harry is seeing, especially the fact that he’s crying in a corner at one point.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. Snape doesn’t want Harry to see this. Snape is tough; he’s strong. He doesn’t have any problems in his life.
Laura: No, I mean, this makes total sense. Somebody does not end up like Snape without a serious amount of trauma in their childhood. There’s just no way.
Andrew: There’s no way you end up with that hair after a good life.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: Yeah, and presumably his father was abusive to his mother, if not physically, verbally, and Snape was witness to a lot of this. And I think we see the transition, right? He is now in his teenage years. He’s very isolated; he’s by himself in his room, and he just doesn’t have much to do, and it’s kind of sad.
Andrew: Yeah, I mean, in this very brief moment we get within Snape’s mind, we learn three very large things that you’re touching on: His dad may have been a bully, he was bullied, and he was isolated and didn’t have any friends. And that’s a lot in one little paragraph.
Laura: Yeah, so he turned into a bully.
Andrew: Right.
Pat: Yeah. And I think this has even a bigger insight, and relates him a lot to Voldemort, because wasn’t it Snape’s dad was the Muggle? So I think the way that he saw his dad treating his mom is part of the reason why he joined Voldemort’s side, because he just hated the way that Muggles treated wizards, the same way that Voldemort just thought his dad was awful and wanted to kill him.
Micah: Yeah, totally. And we’ll never know what was to come after that because their lesson gets interrupted. Now, I don’t know how it’s possible for them to hear a woman screaming all the way up in the entry to the Great Hall when they’re down in the dungeons. Am I not thinking right here?
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: But that just seems like a mistake to me. But we can move past that.
Andrew: The walls are paper thin at Hogwarts.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: We’re talking about a castle here, right? It’s a small point; we can move on from it, but…
Andrew: Okay, well, but the voices might echo through the halls, and Trelawney’s is very loud in the movie, at least. She has her moments.
Micah: Well, this moment, I thought, with Trelawney really shows Umbridge’s vindictive nature, more so than maybe all else, with the exception of her detentions, just in how she’s treating a fellow human being. And I just think it also speaks to the overall condition of Hogwarts right now, right? You have all of the students huddled around, it’s very disorganized, the professors don’t know what they can and can’t do, Dumbledore isn’t there, and in the midst of all this, you have Trelawney just completely breaking down because she’s been sacked from Hogwarts. It’s sad.
Andrew: Yeah. Also, I want to point out, Micah, that bats have very good hearing.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: Oh, that’s what it is, yeah.
Andrew: So that’s probably another reason Snape could hear so good.
Micah: Good call.
Andrew: Yeah, but this is a very sad scene. It’s very… the students and the professors at Hogwarts, I think, feel defeated. Now, of course, there was a good plan in place from Dumbledore that we’ll talk about in a moment, but yeah, this is a very defeating moment for both reader and Harry and a lot of the teachers.
Laura: I mean, the humiliation and the secondhand embarrassment that I feel from reading this scene, Umbridge literally having Trelawney’s trunks tossed out and telling her she’s got to go as presumably hundreds of students stand around and spectate. That’s just awful. She’s going to get a lot of suck count updates today, I’ll tell you that.
Andrew: [laughs] Get ready, Umbridge.
Micah: Yeah, she makes quite the spectacle of all this, and I wonder if the Quibbler situation maybe forced her hand a little bit more. Maybe it pushed her to make decisions more quickly than she otherwise would have. We knew that this was probably coming at some point, but I wonder if this expedited her decision-making.
Andrew: It shows that Umbridge still has control at the school. She kind of fumbled when this interview with Harry occurred, but now she’s kicking out a teacher. She’s still got it. She’s still got things under control at Hogwarts.
Laura: She also needs distraction fodder, right?
Andrew: Right. Make everybody forget about this interview that Harry did.
Pat: Well, it is something in this chapter that is kind of weird as I was rereading it again yesterday. This chapter takes place over an entire month, so The Quibbler comes out in the beginning of the chapter, Trelawney is fired a few weeks later, so if she’s still harboring all of this a couple weeks later, like, girl, you gotta relax somehow. Go pet those kittens. Drink some more tea. Just take some chamomile. Calm down.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Andrew and Micah: Yeah.
Andrew: I agree with that. But I mean, what Harry did is the worst thing that he could do in Umbridge’s mind. She’s doing everything she can to downplay the idea that Voldemort is back, she’s pretending that is not the case at all, and Harry goes behind her back and does this, and I can see why she would stew over this for weeks.
Laura: I think it’s really interesting to look at the disintegration of Hagrid and Trelawney’s mental states in Prisoner of Azkaban and Order of the Phoenix, because of course, in Prisoner of Azkaban, Hagrid’s profession is coming under fire due to the Buckbeak situation, and he’s pretty much drunk the entire book, and we see a very similar thing from Trelawney here in Order of the Phoenix. And there was a really interesting moment in Chapter 6 of Prisoner of Azkaban where she’s addressing the fact that students have never seen her before their third year, and she said, “I find that descending too often into the hustle and bustle of the main school clouds my Inner Eye.” And we really see Trelawney in the main school a lot more in Order of the Phoenix, and she’s wandering around talking to herself, drunk all the time, and it was just an interesting observation that she had earlier on and makes me wonder if there might be a little bit of truth to that statement. I mean, we know that she has made two accurate predictions in the past, and so is this time that she’s being required to spend more down in the main castle, is this also contributing to the deterioration of her classes?
Micah: Yeah. No, that’s really cool, that connection. I wonder, too, yeah. And I also thought when I was reading through this chapter specifically, Dumbledore can’t let Trelawney go, especially now.
Andrew: Right. Yes.
Micah: She holds the key to so much information that it would be highly dangerous for her to be expelled. If you picked any other professor, Dumbledore would probably be like, “Yeah, you know what? Okay, see ya.” Maybe not; he’s a sympathetic guy, but you get my point. If he lets Flitwick go, not the same ramifications as somebody like Trelawney, who made the prophecy about Harry and Voldemort being out there. And I think that also ties back to a lot of what we learn about in Prisoner of Azkaban, at least…
Andrew: Well, and remember, Dumbledore hired her because of that prophecy to begin with. He didn’t want to hire her, and then she makes this prophecy, and he’s like, “Oh, I’ve got to hire her to protect her,” so yeah. But agreed, especially now. And I wanted to bring this up later: He needs to keep her at the school for her own safety. Voldemort would come after her if she was banished to Hogsmeade or wherever else.
Laura: There was also a fun thing I noticed in Chapter 6 of Prisoner of Azkaban when they’re reading the tea leaves. Ron is reading Harry’s tea leaves, and he says, “There’s a blob a bit like a bowler hat. Maybe you’re going to work for the Ministry of Magic.”
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: And of course, that’s more of a Cursed Child connection…
Andrew and Micah: Yeah.
Laura: … but still fun. I was like, “Wow, so she really did think this through.”
Andrew: [laughs] See? Cursed Child is canon.
Laura: Well, I mean, with the exception of the whole Voldemort/Bellatrix winged love child bit. I don’t know about that.
Micah: Yeah. Well, I swear, if you go back in the Goblet of Fire movie and you go to the first task with the dragon, you can see Albus and Scorpius in the crowd. They’re there.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: You just have to look very closely.
Andrew: Ahh. I wish that were true, because then everybody would accept Cursed Child as canon. Everybody would absolutely love it. [laughs] We should Photoshop them in, actually. Let’s do that.
Micah: Oh, I’m sure there’s a way to do that, yeah. Totally.
Andrew: Listener challenge of the week. Remember we used to do those? Listener challenge.
Laura: There’s a throwback.
Andrew: And I also want fan art of Snape giving Harry a head massage. Thank you.
Micah: That might be a bit too far. But actually, you know what? That might already exist somewhere. Umbridge thinks that she has the upper hand until the doors open and Dumbledore appears, and he’s like, “Got ya, bitch.”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: It was a really cool visual that J.K. Rowling described.
Micah: Yeah, it was.
Andrew: Dumbledore standing in the front doors. It’s a misty night behind him, and Harry was impressed by the striking visual. Oh, I wish we saw that in the movie.
Pat: Yeah, instead we got that terrible line delivery.
Micah: Yeah. Do you want to talk about that? Because I agree; that line was awful.
Pat: Yeah, when Dumbledore… after he saves Trelawney, he’s like, “No, you can live here. Blah, blah, blah,” and then he just screams at all of the students, “Don’t you have studying to do?!” Like, really? Dumbledore would not do that.
Andrew: Right.
Micah: Yeah, I said for me, that was second to “Did you put your name in the Goblet of Fire?!” when he’s screaming at Harry in the trophy room.
Andrew and Laura: Yeah.
Micah: Those two lines are up there as not being Dumbledore lines.
Andrew: Yeah, and this is why Michael Gambon got this reputation as being the angry Dumbledore, which didn’t check out with what we saw in the books. And we didn’t see this with Richard Harris’s Dumbledore either; if Richard Harris had lived to star in the remainder of the Harry Potter movies, I think we maybe would have seen a much different Dumbledore.
Micah and Pat: Yeah.
Pat: Michael Gambon didn’t become book Dumbledore until Movie 6.
Micah: Agree, yeah.
Laura: I will say, in his defense, I think part of that is to be blamed on directing.
Andrew: Definitely, and the screenwriting. I’m not blaming Michael Gambon; I’m blaming this production team.
Laura: Yeah, I agree.
Pat: Well, he also should have read the books. That’s helpful.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: Little bit; it helps inform the story. Now that you say that, Andrew, it makes me think, too, Richard Harris… can you imagine him? Just his presence as Dumbledore in the first two movies I thought was so good.
Andrew: Totally.
Micah: And then the moment you mentioned, when the doors opened with just seeing Dumbledore kind of silhouetted against the night sky, I feel like Richard Harris would have been great in that scene.
Andrew: Definitely. I will play devil’s advocate in defense of Dumbledore in the movie in that particular moment. I mean, he did just witness one of his teachers almost get fired, and Umbridge has been driving him up a wall, so it does make sense that Dumbledore would kind of lose his temper. I don’t like it, but I think it can be defended.
Micah: But it shouldn’t be directed at the students, though. That’s the thing.
Andrew: But he lost his temper.
Micah: His frustration should be directed at the professor, not the students.
Andrew: I get it.
Micah: But yeah, I can see him being frustrated, because everybody’s just kind of huddled around and probably making Trelawney feel a lot worse than she otherwise would. This is happening in front of all these kids.
Andrew: Right, she doesn’t… exactly.
Micah: But Dumbledore steps in and he’s like, “You cannot banish her from the grounds. Now meet our new Divination teacher, Firenze, a centaur.”
[Laura laughs]
Pat: Yes.
Andrew: Somebody you hate.
Micah: Somebody whose friends are going to have fun with you later on in this book.
[Andrew laughs]
Pat: I personally always loved the idea of Firenze as a Divination teacher. I love reading those chapters. I love the way that his classroom was all set up. I just… I don’t know, for some reason, the first time I even read this book back in whatever year that was when it came out, it was like… I don’t know, something about him was always fascinating as a teacher.
Andrew: I do think there’s a bit of a plot hole with these Educational Decrees, because Umbridge is able to whip out this Quibbler decree within hours of the Quibbler interview being published, but then Dumbledore is jumping through some holes in one of these previous decrees, saying, “Ah, you only get to appoint a teacher if I am unable to. Well, I am able to.” Why was that hole there for Dumbledore to take advantage of, and why didn’t Umbridge fix that that night?
Micah: I’m sure she’s going to make adjustments moving forward. This is not going to be able to stand; we know that. She’s going to essentially take over not too long from now as the headmaster/headmistress, so I think she’s learning as she goes. And I think early on, she was willing to let some of these decrees be a little bit more open-ended, but now, given everything that’s going on, I think she’s going to get a lot more specific. Even the Quibbler decree; that’s very specific. It’s specifically about The Quibbler.
Andrew: Right, and it escalates very quickly. “Will be immediately expelled.” [laughs]
Pat: Well, and I don’t think she had the foresight to see or to even imagine that Dumbledore would hire a nonhuman as a professor, so I think that was just… that thought never crossed her mind.
Micah: Right. And isn’t the whole ability to replace teachers… that’s coming soon with Hagrid, right? When she’s going to be the one to make the decision as to who replaces him, not Dumbledore. Because clearly, there’s so many different levels at which this is insulting to Umbridge, the first being that he’s obviously flexing his muscle in front of her and the students, saying “You can’t banish her from the grounds,” but also stepping in to replace Trelawney, and to do so with a centaur, which we know Umbridge absolutely loathes any creatures that aren’t considered humans, and even humans, she despises, that aren’t pure-blood.
Andrew: Right.
Micah: So this is really Dumbledore sticking it to Umbridge the best he possibly can.
Andrew: It makes you wonder if Dumbledore had a backup list of other professors for each class, just in case this happened to anybody else. I mean, he saw the writing on the wall with Trelawney and Hagrid, but maybe he had a little backup plan for everybody.
Micah: And convenient he does this the very night, the very moment that Trelawney is being banished. He shows up with Firenze. What coincidence.
Andrew: He saw it coming. He’s a Seer himself.
Micah: Maybe.
Pat: Yeah, he read it in his little smoke dial thing.
Andrew: [laughs] Let’s check in on the Umbridge Suck count. We’re currently at 56 before the events of today’s chapter. First of all, she gets one for looking at Harry during the Quidditch match and smiling at him, taunting him, being like, “Haha, you’re not playing right now. Look at what I did.”
[“Hem-hem!” Umbridge Suck count sound effect plays]
Micah: How about for banning Harry from Hogsmeade and giving him detention? That could actually be two, honestly, because it’s two punishments, right? Or are we keeping it as one? What do we think?
Laura: She particularly sucks this chapter. I think two is fair.
Andrew: Okay.
[“Hem-hem!” Umbridge Suck count sound effect plays]
Pat: Yeah, well, and she also takes 50 points away from Gryffindor because of his interview too.
Micah: Add it to the list.
[“Hem-hem!” Umbridge Suck count sound effect plays]
Laura: This is going to…
[“Hem-hem!” Umbridge Suck count sound effect plays]
[“Hem-hem!” Umbridge Suck count sound effect plays]
Andrew: I’m losing track. Oh my gosh, this is piling up.
Laura: [laughs] This is going to get increasingly more brutal every week as we get towards the end of this book.
Pat: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: What else?
Micah: Definitely giving her one for Educational Decree Number 27 and banning The Quibbler.
Andrew: Yep, that’s an automatic.
[“Hem-hem!” Umbridge Suck count sound effect plays]
Micah: And for sacking Trelawney and making a big scene for no reason. I mean, she could have gotten rid of her without all the theatrics.
[“Hem-hem!” Umbridge Suck count sound effect plays]
MVP of the Week
Andrew: Okay, now it’s time for MVP of the Week.
[MVP of the Week music plays]
Andrew: I’m going to give mine to Dumbledore for protecting Trelawney from eviction and using Firenze as an excellent, excellent clap back.
Micah: My MVP goes to The Quibbler for finally exposing the truth, telling Harry’s story.
Laura: I think Educational Decree Number 27 was an unintentional MVP of the Week, because it inspired everybody to look into Harry’s interview and thus shift the tide on his public perception.
Andrew: Interesting.
Pat: And my MVP of the Week is actually going to go to Snape, because he set aside his ego of Harry seeing some of his memories and continue to move forward with the lesson for the greater good.
Rename the Chapter
Andrew: And now let’s rename the chapter. Order of the Phoenix Chapter 26, “Seer Sacked.”
Micah: I went with Order of the Phoenix Chapter 26, “Umbridge Undermined.”
Andrew: Oooh, I see what you did there.
Laura: That’s some nice alliteration. I went with Order of the Phoenix Chapter 26, “You’ve Activated Dumbledore’s Trap Card.”
[Andrew and Pat laugh]
Pat: And I went with, in Umbridge’s voice, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter 26, “Hem-hem, Quibbler Schmibbler.”
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: If you have any feedback about today’s discussion, or you have a question or comment about Chapter 27, send it on in to MuggleCast@gmail.com, or use the contact form on MuggleCast.com. You can also send us a voice memo; we love hearing everybody. Just record it with your Voice Memo app that’s already built into your smartphone and email it to MuggleCast@gmail.com. Just try to record in a quiet place and keep your message under 60 seconds.
Quizzitch
Andrew: It’s time now for Quizzitch.
[Quizzitch music plays]
Andrew: Last week’s question: What topic does Xenophilius tell Luna Harry’s story is outselling? And the correct answer, as we discussed on this week’s episode, was the Crumple-Horned Snorkack. Congrats to Caleb, Jason, Count Ravioli, I still miss sports, Sara a.k.a. Weensie, Megan, Sarah, Kate, Jabberwock, and LazTatus. And this week’s question: Who retrieves the list of Dumbledore’s Army members for Umbridge? Uh-oh, Spaghettios. Don’t forget to follow us on social media; we are MuggleCast on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. You’ll be notified about future live events, like future live Quizzitch events. We also share show previews, Harry Potter memes, all kinds of things, so again, follow us today. MuggleCast on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. We would also love if you joined our community of listeners at Patreon.com/MuggleCast. By doing so, you’ll be helping this podcast thrive, and to thank you, you will receive some magical benefits in return, including a personalized video “Thank you” message from one of the four MuggleCasters, our twice monthly bonus MuggleCast installments, the ability to listen live as we record, and so much more. So again, that’s Patreon.com/MuggleCast. We deeply appreciate your support. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We are only weekly right now thanks to our listeners. And that does it for this week’s episode of MuggleCast. Thank you for listening. I’m Andrew.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Laura: I’m Laura.
Pat: And I’m Pat.
Andrew: Bye, everybody.
Laura: See ya.
Micah: Bye.
Andrew: [imitating Trelawney] Goodbye, everybody!